That the brightest thing in Cornish land
Is the face of Miss Mary Mundy.
Long ago Mary Mundy and her brother left the "Old Inn," and at this time of writing they are old and poor. How it came that they were jockeyed out of their house I shall not tell here; they will tell it at Mullion; but those who did it, I like to think, did not reap the reward they expected, for the increased business looked for has gone to the great new hotels built overlooking the sea itself, from which Mullion is one mile distant.
CHAPTER XII
POLDHU AND THE MARCONI STATION—MODERN CORNWALL—GUNWALLOE—THE "DOLLAR WRECK"—WRECK OF THE "BRANKELOW"—WRECKS OF THE "SUSAN AND REBECCA" AND OF H.M.S. "ANSON"—LOE BAR AND POOL—HELSTON AND ITS "FURRY"—PORTHLEVEN—BREAGE—WRECK OF THE "NOISIEL"—PENGERSICK CASTLE.
A coastguard path runs along the cliffs from Mullion Cove, descending to the sandy shores of Polurrian, and thence to the smaller, but still sandy, Poldhu Cove. Enterprising builders of hotels have erected large and florid and up-to-date caravanserais here, and golfers have impudently taken possession of the waste-lands. And wireless telegraphy presides visibly over the scene; visibly because, although wireless in one sense, it still has taken, besides the four enormously tall iron and steel towers that stand on Poldhu headland, a vast quantity of interlacing wires to form this chief among the Marconi stations. Those great towers, with their staircases that go winding round and round to the dizzy summits, are an obsession, not only here, but all over the Lizard district. You may see them quite easily, ten miles away.
It is the last touch of modernity; and yet, you know, although these towers are so ugly, they are the visible representatives of an invisible power of communication through the ether that is very much more wonderful than any tales of magic ever told in Cornwall.
For the other modern things in Cornwall—barrack-hotels, golfers, "tinned" bread, and scientific methods of dealing with the milk—there is no excuse. Before these developments, Cornwall—save in the matter of overmuch rain—was near perfection.
The curses of modern Cornwall, from the point of view of any one who prefers honesty, old-fashioned ways, and the continuance of the ancient manners and customs of the delightful country west of the Tamar, are High Churchism, golf, tin bungalows, huge caravanserai hotels, and tinned bread. To these some might add "Riviera" expresses and motor-cars, for they are opening up, between them, the uttermost corners of what was once a difficult land for the tourist; and the more you do thus "open up" Cornwall, the less like the dear delightful old Duchy it ever becomes, and the more closely it approximates to the cockneyfied shores nearer London.